Photo 101, Day Seventeen: Glass, Squared
Green Trees
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Tag Archives: stained glass
Treasure Trove
We’re up to Day 16 of the Blogging U’s Photo 101 course. The subject today is “treasure.” The instructions given in this lesson tell us that “any object or experience that is deeply meaningful can be a treasure. Items, places, people — we all cherish something, or someone.”
No surprise here: one of the things I greatly treasure in my life is having the space, time, and capability to follow my love of working with stained glass.
The photo I took for this lesson shows the partial contents of a drawer containing scraps of glass left over from previous projects; scraps that are just waiting to become part of some new project sometime down the road.
My family used to put together jigsaw puzzles occasionally, and it was considered “cheating” to look at the picture on the box cover to figure out placement of the different components of the image. It was more of a challenge to figure it all out without knowing exactly what the finished puzzle would look like.
With my glass scraps, the “picture on the box” may not even exist yet, and yet the puzzle pieces do. Sometimes a small glass scrap may be just what I need to fit into a particular design I’ve drawn up, but sometimes my design evolves from the particular scraps on hand.
So maybe what I treasure most is the creative process and the potential of the raw materials. I wonder… is it cheating to make the puzzle fit your pieces instead of having the pieces fit the puzzle?
Photo 101, Day Sixteen: Treasure + Close-up
Meditation in Glass
Before they move on
to adorn a home, or
add warmth to a sanctuary, or
brighten what might be
an otherwise drab view;
before they move on
to the employ of others,
they are mine to define and
to quietly reflect upon in the
peaceful solitude
of my own little shop.
Blogging U. Day Five: Solitude
Play Time
This is Day One of the WordPress Blogging U’s course Photography 101. Okay, I’ve taken the class twice before, but what can I say? It’s fun!
Today’s assignment is to share an image showing, “What does ‘home’ mean to you?” And of course, my first thought for a meaningful photo was: My bathroom! Well, more specifically, the new backsplash I made for the sink.
I happen to have a bit of opaque stained glass laying around (okay, maybe a lot of it), which I rarely use these days as I am mostly working with translucent or transparent glass for panels meant to be displayed in windows. I decided to try making opaque glass tiles to add a “splash” of color to the bathroom. The photo above shows the results.
My home is nothing fancy, was built over 60 years ago, and for me it is a perfect place to try out new skills on whatever “improvements” I want to attempt. It’s my life-sized “arts and crafts” project, you might say. My personal playground for pretending to be a plumber or a carpenter, or sometimes a purple unicorn. Don’t judge.
So what’s in the works for my next home project? I don’t know yet. I’ll have to see what’s in my toy box. Uh, I mean my tool box.
Dog Imitates Art
The theme for this week’s Daily Post photo challenge is “Life Imitates Art.”
When I created the “Canid” panel (pictured below), I had a fox in mind. Some folks commented that it looked like my American Eskimo dog, except for the coloring of course.
I’ve been thinking about tweaking the design to make a similar panel to represent my Eskie. Might have to add that to the queue of projects.
In the meantime, enjoy my entry for the “life imitates art” challenge:
Chules, my America Eskimo dog
“Canid” stained glass panel by Maggie C.
Give Me a Break
When working with stained glass, it’s always wise to factor in the likelihood of breakage during the construction of a panel. That’s what glass does. It breaks. It cracks. It shatters.
And when it does, you say, “Oops!” or some other four letter words, sweep away the shards, pull out the extra glass that you purchased for just such an occasion, and go on with the project.
But sometimes you have only a limited supply of a particular type of glass, and you have to plan carefully to get the best use out of it. And so it was with my Spring Birds panel.
The background glass was rather spendy, and so I bought just the amount that I thought would be needed for the project.
When it came to cutting and fitting the largest background piece into the panel, I was ever so careful to get it just right. There would be no second chances, because I had no other piece of that kind large enough to replace this one.
I got the piece in, sighing with relief as I tapped the horseshoe nail into place to keep it from shifting and, as I turned away to get the next piece to put in place, I mindlessly gave the nail just one. more. tap.
And I heard it. That heartbreaking, glass breaking, shard making sound. I looked back and saw this:
Oops, indeed!
Long story short, after a trip to the Uroboros glass factory and many dollars later, I was able to replace the broken piece and finish the panel.
I guess when you work with glass, them’s the breaks.
Daily Post weekly photo challenge: Oops!
Inward Eyes
“To see the moon that cannot be seen,
turn your eyes inward & look at yourself, in silence…”~ Rumi
Moon Phases (artist Maggie C)
You might say I’m in the eye business. According to Dictionary.com, one of the definitions of eye is:
the power of seeing; appreciative or discriminating visual perception: [as in] the eye of an artist.
Okay, so this particular definition is sixth in line of the listed meanings, but it is there.
I think for most visual artists, what you see (literally, with your eyes) when you look at their work is inconsequential compared to what you feel. Or how it makes you think. Or what memories it evokes.
Or any number of other responses. But a response that comes from your inner eye.
I always find it interesting to hear how my stained glass pieces affect a viewer. What it says to them, if anything. It’s especially interesting with my abstract designs.
Someone saw one of my panels once and said, “That looks like hope!” Someone else might see it and say it looks like despair. There’s no right or wrong.
I may have my own interpretations of the pieces, and my interpretation is also neither right nor wrong, even though it’s my creation. It can evoke myriad responses from me, too. Different responses at different times.
Different things that my inner eye chooses to perceive. That’s what makes art – and life – interesting.
“Close both eyes to see with the other eye.”
~ Rumi
Seasonal Transitions
It’s fun to make series of panels on a theme. I have one in progress that I’ll share more about later.
The topic of The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge this week is Transition.
Here I have used some fun background glass to help depict the four seasons. Hope you enjoy.
Click on photo below for larger images of each panel.
Grid: Optical Illusion
Taking part in The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge. This week’s theme: Grid.
This optical illusion is an oldie but a goodie… how many cubes are there? Is it the tops of the cubes that are purple, or the bottoms?
A fun and simple stained glass panel.
120 Years but No Longer Counting
I had thought it odd the last time I was at the local stained glass supply store. I’d asked for a couple of lengths of the half-inch zinc U-came that I use to frame most of my panels. The clerk had turned to the wall behind the counter where the long boxes that held the six-foot long strips of came were shelved.
After making a vague show of glancing into a couple of boxes, he announced, “We don’t have any.”
“When do you expect to have more?” I inquired.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” he said.
He wouldn’t count on it? I wanted to say, “You didn’t really look very hard. Maybe there’s some in the back room where you guys disappear to sometimes to retrieve the less frequently requested supplies.”
But I’m not the pushy kind, so instead I hopefully asked, “But you do expect to have more sometime?”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” he replied.
If I were the pushy kind, I would have then said, “What do you mean, ‘I wouldn’t count on it?’ Surely I’m not the only one who buys this item. And if you no longer carry it, you should say so, or say you can order it, or say where I might find some. But just ‘I wouldn’t count on it?’ What lousy customer service!”
But of course, I didn’t say any of that. I’m more of the strong silent type. Or perhaps the wimpy silent type. Most likely the latter. Regardless, I left the store sans zinc and puzzled by the whole encounter.
I returned to the store yesterday, thinking that if someone else were working the counter I would ask again about the zinc came, and maybe inquire as to exactly what “I wouldn’t count on it” meant. That would have been quite pushy for me, too, but I was still rankled by the prior clerk’s lackluster comments.
I got my answer even before stepping foot in the store. A notice posted on the front door read “Going Out of Business.”
After 12 decades in business, Cline Glass in Portland, OR was shutting its doors.
I’ve frequented Cline’s ever since I began dabbling in stained glass in the 1990s. Before moving to the Portland area, I would drive the 80-some miles from the coastal town of Tillamook to purchase supplies for my projects. Over the couple of decades since my introduction to stained glass, it has evolved from “dabbling” into something more akin to my “lifeline.”
A bit melodramatic perhaps, but glass is my greatest outlet for creativity. A form of meditation. My home studio is my place to get into “the zone” and settle my anxieties for a bit of time. A place to let the ruminating side of my brain take a rest as the technical side figures out how to score the glass to get that inside curve to break cleanly.
Sure, I can order glass and supplies from catalogs or online, but buying stained glass long distance is really a crap shoot.
There are often significant variations even within an individual sheet of some types of glass. And what you receive in your long-awaited delivery from across the country may or may not resemble the sample photo you saw in the online catalog. Usually it does not.
When buying stained glass online, you can’t hold it up and see how it reflects light, how it filters light, how it comes to life and brings the ambient light around it to life.
You can’t place it next to another selected piece and see how the colors and textures will relate with one another, evaluate whether the pieces will work together to create the effect you want, determine whether the unique patterns on the quarter-sheets in front of you are capable of telling the story you want your finished piece to portray.
Needless to say, I’m bummed. I asked a clerk yesterday (not the “wouldn’t count on it” guy) where I might go from now on to get my glass, and he said, “Try Seattle.” Another 173 miles away, but I will make the drive when I need to.
I’ll need to plan out my projects better. I will no longer have the luxury of thinking, “You know what would look good here…” and zipping off to Cline’s to see if they still have that kind or color I saw on a previous visit.
As a general rule, I don’t like change. But I guess every 120 years or so, change is going to happen. I will miss Cline’s, but Seattle’s a nice town to visit. Maybe I’ll find a good source of glass there, a retailer that will be in business for another fifty years at least.
If I find that source, I will likely stick with it for the next few decades or so, or until I can no longer break out inside curves, whichever comes first.
That, I would say, is something you can count on.
What Rhymes with Stanza? 